en-US Thu, 31 Jan 2019 20:35:04 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Monita 5 to-read 4.46 2018
author: Tara Westover
name: Monita
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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]]> 31371250
A story of the fragility of the mind and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and whom do we live for?]]> 320 Mark Lukach 0062422936 Monita 0 to-read 4.07 2017
author: Mark Lukach
name: Monita
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> 38746485
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.]]> 426 Michelle Obama 1524763136 Monita 5 4.42 2018
author: Michelle Obama
name: Monita
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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]]> 805632
Stories contained in this volume:
- Moloch
- Olesya
- Night Duty
- The White Poodle
- I Was An Actor
- The Gambrinus
- Emerald
- The Garnet Bracelet.]]> 388 Aleksandr Kuprin 1410102351 Monita 5 4.13
author: Aleksandr Kuprin
name: Monita
average rating: 4.13
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rating: 5
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]]> 333657 104 Aleksandr Ostrovsky 1406938556 Monita 5 3.65 1859
author: Aleksandr Ostrovsky
name: Monita
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1859
rating: 5
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]]> 297165 128 Alexandr Blok 1857544730 Monita 5 4.28 1918
author: Alexandr Blok
name: Monita
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1918
rating: 5
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]]> 792712
A master of formally inventive poetry and what today would be called micro-fiction, Kharms built off the legacy of Russian Futurist writers to create a uniquely deadpan style written out of and in spite of the absurdities of life in Stalinist Russia. Featuring the acclaimed novella The Old Woman and darkly humorous short prose sequence Events (Sluchai), Today I Wrote Nothing also includes dozens of short prose pieces, plays, and poems long admired in Russia, but never before available in English. A major contribution for American readers and students of Russian literature and an exciting discovery for fans of contemporary writers as eclectic as George Saunders, John Ashbery, and Martin McDonagh, Today I Wrote Nothing is an invaluable collection for readers of innovative writing everywhere.

About the Editor


MATVEI YANKELEVICH is also a co-translator of Oberiu: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (2006). His translation of the Vladimir Mayakovsky's poem "Cloud in Pants" appears in Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and About Mayakovsky. He is the author of a long poem, The Present Work, and his writing has appeared in Fence, Open City, and many other literary journals. He teaches Russian Literature at Hunter College in New York City and edits the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling Press in Brooklyn.]]> 287 Daniil Kharms 1585677434 Monita 4 4.30 2007
author: Daniil Kharms
name: Monita
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> 7970550 Diaboliad caused an uproar upon the book's first publication in 1925. Full of invention, they display Bulgakov's breathtaking stylistic range, moving at dizzying speed from grotesque satire to science fiction, from the plainest realism to the most madcap of fantasies. Diaboliad is a wonderful introduction to literature's most uncategorisable and subversive genius.]]> 174 Mikhail Bulgakov 0099529556 Monita 5 3.68 1925
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Monita
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1925
rating: 5
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]]> 17878 Dostoyevsky said he wrote the Village of Stepanchikovo (1859) for the sheer pleasure of prolonging the adventures of my new hero and enjoying a good laugh at him. This hero is not unlike myself...

Dostoyevsky's narrator has been summoned to his uncle Colonel Rostanev's remote country estate in the hope that he will act as decoy and rescue Rostanev's former ward, Nastenka Yezhevikin, from the tyranny of Opiskin, a despot and charlatan who has the whole household under his thumb. Forty-eight hours of explosive comic drama unfold, culminating in a violent confrontation between Opiskin and the ineffectual Rostanev.

Dostoyevsky conveys a delight in life's absurdities to rival that of Gogol, yet at the same time in Opiskin, a comic monster of Russian literature, he creates an unflattering portrait of his mentor. Here we recognize the genesis of the characters and the revelatory dramatic scenes of and The Karamazov Brothers.

The cover shows a detail from Spring by Konstantin Fedorovich Yuon reproduced by courtesy of the David King Collection.]]> 224 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0140446583 Monita 5 3.90 1859
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Monita
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1859
rating: 5
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]]> 130080 Red Cavalry cycle retains today the shocking freshness that made Babel's reputation when the stories were first published in the 1920s. Using his own experiences as a journalist and propagandist with the Red Army during the war against Poland, Babel brings to life an astonishing cast of characters from the exuberant, violent era of early Soviet history: commissars and colonels, Cossacks and peasants, and among them the bespectacled, Jewish writer/intellectual, observing it all and trying to establish his role in the new Russia.

Drawn from the acclaimed, award-winning Complete Works of Isaac Babel, this volume includes all of the Red Cavalry cycle; Babel's 1920 diary, from which the material for the fiction was drawn; and his preliminary sketches for the stories—the whole constituting a fascinating picture of a great writer turning life into art.]]> 320 Isaac Babel 0393324230 Monita 3 to-read 4.08 1926
author: Isaac Babel
name: Monita
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1926
rating: 3
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]]> 132543
One of the great classic novels of Russian literature, The Golovlyov Family is a vivid picture of a condemned and isolated outpost of civilization that, for contemporary readers, will recall the otherwordly reality of Macondo in Gabriel GarcĂ­a MĂĄrquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.]]> 358 Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin 0940322579 Monita 5 4.04 1880
author: Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
name: Monita
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1880
rating: 5
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]]> 2376088 The Queue, is a sly comedy about the late Soviet "years of stagnation." It consists entirely of sounds and
dialogue from people performing the quintessential Soviet act: joining a
long line to buy something, without knowing what..Thousands of citizens are in line and the rumors are flying. Leather or suede? Jackets, jeans? Turkish, Swedish, maybe even American? It doesn't matter - if anything is on sale, you better line up to buy it. Sorokin's tour de force of ventriloquism and formal daring tells the whole story in snatches of unattributed dialogue, adding up to nothing less than the real voice of the people, overheard on the street as they joke and curse, fall in and out of love, slurp down ice cream or vodka, fill out crossword puzzles, and even go to sleep and line up again in the morning as the queue drags on.]]> 263 Vladimir Sorokin 1590172744 Monita 5 3.76 1984
author: Vladimir Sorokin
name: Monita
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1984
rating: 5
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]]> 189954
“This is fearsomely good writing. And the ultimate hero of Memoirs of a Revolutionary is not the one we would normally suspect: not Lenin, not Trotsky, not the multitudes of French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian Anarchists, Communists and radicals that Serge knew. . . Rather, the hero in this story is Serge himself.”—RALPH

“I can't think of anyone else who has written about the revolutionary movement in this century with Serge's combination of moral insight and intellectual richness.”—Dwight Macdonald

“An extraordinary time capsule from the darkest hours of the twentieth century. Although often compared to Orwell, Serge is a more noble and irreconcilable figure. This book—written as the GPU was exterminating the last of the Bolshevik old guard-is a fiery testament to political conscience and revolutionary hope. Through Serge, we know something of those gigantic but largely forgotten figures: the anarchist and communist opponents of Stalin.”—Mike Davis

“The best account of [Serge's] life remain his “Memoirs,” and one hopes its re-publication wins Serge the wider readership he deserves. . . . An impassioned work of burning intensity, Serge's “Memoirs,” charts not only his own harrowing odyssey through the revolutionary maelstrom of interwar Europe but also the tragic fortunes of an entire generation of leftists and fellow revolutionaries . . . For the contemporary reader, “Memoirs,” still offers one of the finest—and most terrifying—accounts of the degradation of the Russian Revolution into murderous tyranny and bureaucratic strangulation . . . Serge's capacity to convey roiling human passion never dims; whether he is writing about allies or enemies, his subjects live and breathe.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

The book begins in 1906, with Serge describing his impoverished, idealistic days as an activist in the left-wing movements of Europe; it ends with the years 1936 to 1941 after his release from exile to a remote city in a time of famine, expulsion from the Soviet Union, escape from Nazi agents in Paris, and flight to Mexico as a political refugee. More than a personal memoir, this insider's history of the revolution and its allied upheavals fills in the human details that add to our understanding of how mass movements take place, how governments stand and fall, how individuals survive in struggles between ideologies. It is a human memoir and, though set in an inhumane time, during a clash among powerful ideals, it is a humane memoir.]]> 446 Victor Serge 0877458278 Monita 5 4.44 1951
author: Victor Serge
name: Monita
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1951
rating: 5
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]]> 184350 695 Leon Trotsky 0873481445 Monita 5 4.20 1929
author: Leon Trotsky
name: Monita
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1929
rating: 5
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]]> 184582 512 Isaac Deutscher 1859844510 Monita 5 4.34 1963
author: Isaac Deutscher
name: Monita
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1963
rating: 5
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]]> 184450 126 Leon Trotsky 0873483197 Monita 5 4.06 1938
author: Leon Trotsky
name: Monita
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1938
rating: 5
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]]> 925082 62 Karl Marx 9998995027 Monita 5 4.35 1849
author: Karl Marx
name: Monita
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1849
rating: 5
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]]> 187745 338 Harry Braverman 0853459401 Monita 5 4.29 1974
author: Harry Braverman
name: Monita
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1974
rating: 5
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]]> 7316687 Capital, Volume 1, and to read it on Marx’s own terms
”

The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression has generated a surge of interest in Marx’s work in the effort to understand the origins of our current predicament. For nearly forty years, David Harvey has written and lectured on Capital, becoming one of the world’s most foremost Marx scholars.

Based on his recent lectures, this current volume aims to bring this depth of learning to a broader audience, guiding first-time readers through a fascinating and deeply rewarding text. A Companion to Marx’s Capital offers fresh, original and sometimes critical interpretations of a book that changed the course of history and, as Harvey intimates, may do so again.

David Harvey’s video lecture course can be found here: ]]> 368 David Harvey 1844673588 Monita 5 4.24 2010
author: David Harvey
name: Monita
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2010
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]]> 189598
"For the historical effect of History and Class Consciousness and also for the actuality of the present time one problem is of decisive importance: alienation, which is here treated for the first time since Marx as the central question of a revolutionary critique of capitalism, and whose historical as well as methodological origins are deeply rooted in Hegelian dialectic. It goes without saying that the problem was omnipresent. A few years after History and Class Consciousness was published, it was moved into the focus of philosophical discussion by Heidegger in his Being and Time, a place which it maintains to this day largely as a result of the position occupied by Sartre and his followers. The philologic question raised by L. Goldmann, who considered Heidegger's work partly as a polemic reply to my (admittedly unnamed) work, need not be discussed here. It suffices today to say that the problem was in the air, particularly if we analyze its background in detail in order to clarify its effect, the mixture of Marxist and Existentialist thought processes, which prevailed especially in France immediately after the Second World War. In this connection priorities, influences, and so on are not particularly significant. What is important is that the alienation of man was recognized and appreciated as the central problem of the time in which we live, by bourgeois as well as proletarian, by politically rightist and leftist thinkers. Thus, History and Class Consciousness exerted a profound effect in the circles of the youthful intelligentsia."]]> 401 György Lukåcs 0262620200 Monita 5 4.06 1923
author: György Lukåcs
name: Monita
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1923
rating: 5
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]]> 349650 260 Herbert Marcuse 0807014176 Monita 5 3.99 1964
author: Herbert Marcuse
name: Monita
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1964
rating: 5
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]]> 381440 The Society of the Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth century. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture.]]> 154 Guy Debord 0942299795 Monita 5 4.05 1967
author: Guy Debord
name: Monita
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1967
rating: 5
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]]> 2784 John Berger’s Classic Text on Art

Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the (London) Sunday Times a critic commented: "This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures." By now he has.

"Berger has the ability to cut right through the mystification of the professional art critics . . . He is a liberator of images: and once we have allowed the paintings to work on us directly, we are in a much better position to make a meaningful evaluation" —Peter Fuller, Arts Review

"The influence of the series and the book . . . was enormous . . . It opened up for general attention to areas of cultural study that are now commonplace" —Geoff Dyer in Ways of Telling.]]> 176 John Berger 0140135154 Monita 5 3.93 1972
author: John Berger
name: Monita
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1972
rating: 5
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]]>